Several U.S. patents, including No. 4,260,637 to Rispoli et al.; No. 4,218,485 to Lee et al.; No. 4,208,442 to Evans et al.; No. 4,068,009 to Rispoli et al.; No. 3,952,110 to Knight et al.; No. 3,852,501 to Fazzina et al.; No. 3,843,827 to Lee et al. and No. 3,586,512 to Mancuso et al., disclose dry coating formulations which are useful to provide a fried appearance, taste and texture to baked foodstuffs such as chicken. While each of these patents represents an advance in the art, there remain opportunities to further improve upon the characteristics of the coated and baked comestible so as to render one or more of these characteristics more similar to the character of deep fat fried comestibles.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,486,904 discloses the use of a prefried cereal breading material which is applied directly onto batter coated foodstuffs which are then frozen, this technique being an alternative to deep fat frying the batter-coated comestible prior to freezing. Copending and commonly-assigned application to Coleman and Mills (Ser. No. 438,097) discloses the use of deep fat fried farinaceous particles in a coating composition which is applied to foodstuffs prior to baking.